The Bobby Pin

To Alex, I was the shadow of a selfish, needy villain

Four years ago, I woke up to an email from my new boyfriend, Don. The subject line was simply “Morning Story.” It was a short excerpt about me—written by Alex, Don’s spouse.

Don and I had only been dating for a few months. My fiancé and I had been non-monogamous for a year, but this Don was new territory—my first serious partner in polyamory. First time meeting the spouse, negotiating sleepovers, and navigating the vast, thorny valley of fears and ethics that crop up when traversing non-monogamy, like the first time you come home from sleeping with your new boyfriend and realize you’ve forgotten to brush your teeth.

Alex made polyamory look easy. They’d been non-monogamous longer than I, and somehow seemed unaffected by the same petty insecurities that plagued me (Are they skinnier? Prettier? ). So when their morning story landed in my inbox, I was relieved. And then I was touched. I wanted to be closer.

Over the next four years, my relationship with Alex bloomed. We moved through many phases, from metamours (meaning, my partner’s partner), to chosen family, partners, and then, creative partners. Their morning story also grew—into an essay, and then a whole book. In its final phase, I got to edit that book. It’s called Entwined, and much like Alex, it is a thing of vulnerability, care, and beauty.

This week, as I am hunkered down, working on my own labor of creative love (my thesis! essays! maybe a book?!), I’m sharing Alex’s essay “The Bobby Pin” with you.

If you enjoy it, I encourage you to learn about Alex’s publishing collective, and pre-order their memoir Entwined here.

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I slipped two gold bobby pins in my hair and picked up a third. I froze.

The next one in my hand was black. I realized it must be Aly’s—Don’s new girlfriend. They’d been dating for a month. She had beautiful dark hair, long and thick. The kind I spent my teenage years envying. I looked around the bathroom, wondering where to store the bobby pin. Through the open window, I heard laughs from Columbia students out for boozy brunch.

Finding reminders of Don’s other partners gave me momentary pangs of jealousy. When I noticed the bedsheets had been changed, I imagined Don having loud, vigorous sex. Or when wine glasses were placed on the wrong shelf, I pictured a girlfriend pouring cabernet wearing one of Don’s button-downs like a dress over her naked body. I had learned to acknowledge these intrusive images, and breathe through them slowly and deeply.

I’d been with Don for three years. He met Aly after both he and I had gone through difficult breakups with our respective partners, and we were grappling with how to make real room for others in our lives. Fortunately, Aly lived with her fiancé, so she was less threatening to me than the unpartnered women Don had briefly dated.

I held the bobby pin between my thumb and index finger, scanning the bathroom. I opened the vanity, but it would have been odd to place it between cleaning products and a toilet plunger. I opened the medicine cabinet, but if I placed it between Don’s hair paste and nail clippers, would I be officially giving Aly a space in our home? If I threw the bobby pin away, was I failing at polyamory? Until I could decide what to do, I placed it back in the stack of pins I kept on the windowsill.

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I’d met Don three years earlier, when I was twenty-six, having just finished a degree in educational technology. I’d moved to Brooklyn from Montreal for school, and ditched monogamy as soon as I set foot in the city; my newfound anonymity made me feel free to explore parts of myself I had previously repressed, like my bisexuality and my desire for multiple partners.

On our first date, I sat on a red cushioned bench, my back to the window, and Don sat on a dark leather chair in front of me, at an eerily empty wine bar. Large edison bulbs hung from the wood paneling on the ceilings. I told Don that I was surprised he’d messaged me.

“Are you looking for a committed non-monogamous relationship?” I said. “Because nothing in your profile says that.”

I had been burned many times by people who thought that the “non-monogamous” label on my OkCupid profile meant “seeking casual sex.”

Don slowly reclined in his seat, shifted his knees to the side of the table, and crossed his long legs. He was rocking a seersucker jacket and cowboy boots. Not a lot of men can pull that off in New York City. But he did. Handsomely.

“Honestly,” he said, “I’ve never really thought about non-monogamy before. So I don’t know if it’s what I’m looking for.”

It wasn’t the answer I wanted, but I had a weak spot for graying beards and blue eyes.

“Here’s what I do know,” he continued. “I’m almost 36, and I haven’t been truly happy in a relationship for more than a year. There’s gotta be something I’m doing wrong.”

He told me that his first love cheated on him for years. That he went through two failed engagements before he got married, and filed for divorce less than a year after the wedding. He talked about the life crisis he underwent when he left his Southern Baptist church and became an atheist.

“I’ve questioned everything I was taught growing up,” he said. “Except monogamy. Reading your profile made me curious.”

Something about Don’s ability to share his experiences with both vulnerability and confidence eased my typical first-date stiffness. I crossed my legs and leaned back, rested my elbow on my hip, holding up my glass of Pinot Noir. I openly talked about my romantic and sexual attraction for women. I was upfront about not wanting kids. I even admitted that I feared growing old alone because I’d felt trapped in the kind of relationship that everyone around me and on TV seemed to find happiness in.

The next evening, Don and I went on our second date. On our third date, Don invited me to join him on a trip to a scientific conference in New Orleans. We plunged into unrestrained love.

Don and I got married a year in, not because we were invested in the institution of marriage, but because my visa was expiring, and our love was not. By the time he met Aly, Don and I had both gone through difficult breakups with respective partners, and were grappling with how to make real room for others in our lives. Fortunately, Aly lived with her fiancé, so she was less threatening to me than the unpartnered women Don had briefly dated.

After Don’s first date with Aly, I sat on the toilet and opened the calendar app on my phone. I noticed a new event that Friday in blue, the color of Don’s calendar. It was titled Aly?

I washed my hands quickly and dried them on my jeans while I walked across the hall to the living room.“Did you schedule a date this weekend?” I asked Don, standing in the doorway. He picked up the TV controller from the blue metal library card cabinet that served as a coffee table and pressed pause on a documentary about Ancient Rome.

“Oh right! Well, not yet,” he said, “but Aly was only free Friday night this week. It’s tough to say no when it’s only our second date… Maybe I can see her right after work and get back here early so we can spend a chunk of the evening together?”

I had always fiercely guarded weekends. Don is an introvert—his energy level is correlated with the number of words he has spoken on any given day. After being promoted at his research center, his meeting-packed weekdays left him drained. His Sundays were reserved for watching football or documentaries to recharge for the week. Friday evenings and Saturdays were our peak quality time, and I insisted he ask my permission before scheduling a date on those days.

“I guess that’s fine,” I said begrudgingly, crossing my arms and leaning my shoulder on the doorway. “But it would be the second Friday in a row you see her. Can you make it clear that our dates with others are usually on weeknights?”

Don acquiesced, but my jaw remained clenched.

I hadn’t met Aly yet. The meet-the-spouse step of the relationship was a delicate one, and we usually waited at least five or six dates. To me, she was the shadow of a selfish, needy villain, threatening to take something irreplaceable away from me. Don pushed play. Caesar was marching legions of soldiers across a river. 

After Don’s fourth date with Aly, he carefully initiated a poly rules check-in over breakfast: “Aly explained that she isn't comfortable having sex with a partner without sleepovers.” He paused. I walked to the window behind me and pulled back the blackout curtain. The morning eastern sun was blinding, even in the winter. Don squinted. “I know more sleepovers is also something Nathan wanted with you,” he said. “So I wanted to see what you think.”  

I sat down on my mustard chair. My ears pulsed. I looked down at my scrambled eggs and said nothing.

I was dismayed to be spending our Saturday morning talking about his girlfriend. I’d asked him just last week to stop playing her album over the Bluetooth speaker because, while yes, it was good and exactly my kind of folk music, I didn’t need to hear her sing when we were having a tête-à-tête.

Don took a bite. In our silence, I heard Nathan’s most devastating reason for breaking up with me: “It took a whole year before I was allowed to spend the night and wake up with you.” Don chewed slowly, his eyes surveying mine.

“I’ll think about it,” I said, then stood up and walked my plate to the garbage can. I pressed my foot on the pedal and dumped the rest of my eggs.

Don and I had allowed a handful of sleepovers with our other partners, but they were reserved for special occasions. We typically coordinated so we would both have them on the same night. Initially, this was one of the rules that was most important to me; sharing sleep felt more intimate than sex. Don was territorial about the bathroom: I was the first partner he showered with regularly, so this felt special to him, and he preferred I didn’t share cleaning intimacy with anyone else.

We traded sleepover and shower privileges, treating our partners like subordinates who didn’t deserve a seat at the negotiation table.

Don’s girlfriend before Aly, Brittany, lived alone, so their dates and occasional sleepovers always happened at her place. I had a beautiful relationship with Brittany, but I’d never found her threatening—she and her primary partner maintained a strict hierarchy. How would I feel with Aly sleeping in our bed? Doing her hair in our bathroom? 

Even though Don and I kept both of our apartments and spent half the week apart, we shared our homes; we rented my studio on Airbnb’s on weekends, we split the combined rent in half, chose furniture together, and referred to our apartments by the name of the street they were on, not “Alex’s place” and “Don’s place.” It felt remarkably sustainable to share life-long goals with Don while maintaining independence and the excitement of missing him weekly.

Aly and I made plans to meet for coffee a few days later; our first time meeting each other. I arrived early and sat by a floor-to-ceiling window on the second floor, overlooking a prewar building covered by green scaffolding. I recognized Aly from her pictures as she ascended the staircase. I waved and she walked gracefully but purposefully towards me, her steps clacking on the wood floor. We were the only customers upstairs and there was no music playing. She wore black knee-high boots over black pants and a long beige coat.

“So nice to finally meet you!” she said in a high-pitched voice, with so much enthusiasm I wondered if it was authentic.

Her long frizfree hair and her red lipstick were impeccable. I admired how put together she was and momentarily felt self-conscious about my messy ponytail and my plain tee shirt.

  Aly listened intently to my how I ended up trying non-monogamy summary (the inevitable introductory topic). She nodded her head energetically and raised her eyebrows in quick intervals. She crushed every two-second silence with a follow-up question. Lost in my own anxiety, it hadn’t occurred to me that she may be nervous to meet me.

I listened to her telling me the highlights of her life story. Like Don, Aly had grown up in the South, and had experiences imprinted in her that I could never fully understand—similar to how Don would never feel my French-Canadian culture in his bones. She had gone back to school to study creative writing, and I was excited to have someone to talk to about my side writing projects. Our conversation was punctuated by the occasional hammering from the construction site across the street. I walked to the bathroom, passed a large decorative wall quilt with tones of red and ocre. While washing my hands, I began to focus on what Aly could add to my life instead of what she might take away. It had been surprisingly hard for me to make platonic friendships in the city. Unless there was potential for romantic love or sex, no new connection had room for me on their calendar. Even though Aly and I were strangers, her budding romance with Don gave us a reason to prioritize developing a unique kind of friendship. After just a half-hour, I felt my abdomen relax. Aly was now a person to me. A person with a nervous propensity to fill silences, a self-consciousness about not finishing college until her thirties, and hopes for a new creative future outside of music. And—just like me—she was on a path to figuring out what kind of relationship would make her happy.

Two days after I found Aly’s bobby pin, I was folding laundry and noticed an unfamiliar neon orange sports bra. Then a new tank top, shorts, and socks. I scanned my body, expecting the usual pangs of jealousy. None. I walked to the living room with the pile of workout clothing in hand. Don was on the recliner reading something on his phone, probably a depressing article about climate change. I walked closer to him, and stood at his side, holding out the items. “These are Aly’s, right?” I asked.

“Oh…that’s right,” he answered slowly, his voice lower. He pushed the recliner closed with his legs and tapped his pocket in search of his e-cigarette. He stood up, slid his fingers between the seat and the armrest, and found it. He took a long drag, looking into my eyes, still standing. “We played tennis,” he said apologetically.

He clearly hadn’t considered the emotional implications of tossing Aly’s clothes in our hamper.

“I’ll put them in your workout clothes drawer for next time she needs it. Does that work?”

“That sounds great, sweetheart.” There was surprise and gratitude in his voice. He sat back down.

Don loved tennis, and I refused to touch a racket. Any activity that required me to hit a moving target with an object or a limb gave me a panic attack. I felt relieved that Don had finally found a tennis partner.  

I, too, had wished for more freedom with my ex. I knew what it was like to love under the weight of rules; forcing our other partners into tight little boxes that left no room for deep intimacy and commitment. It left no room for their needs. No wonder Nathan felt secondary. Had we met when I was farther along in my polyamorous journey, might we still be together?

Don and I had built security in our relationship, and it was time to loosen the hierarchy we had been operating under. Even though I knew that traditional expectations of love were still ingrained somewhere in me, I aspired to a more egalitarian polyamory.

I folded Aly’s exercise clothes, and as I placed them neatly into the drawer, I felt a new kind of lightness. I actually wanted her relationship with Don to have the room it needed to grow. I returned to the living room and told Don they should have sleepovers whenever they wanted.

The next time I reached for a bobby pin and picked up the black one, it had been more than a week since its existence had frozen me. 

I popped it in my hair with a smile.

Pre-order Entwined: Essays on Polyamory and Creating Home.